Good Friday

An article by Matt    2 Comments

People think it odd when I tell them one of my favorite days on the calendar of Christendom is Good Friday.

There is a power to this day of shadows.
There is a joy to this darkest of days.
There is a deep richness to this day of mourning.

As we embrace Good Friday, the day commemorating Christ’s last day on earth, I pray that we will take in the ugliness, the horror, and the darkness that is Good Friday.  I pray that we will lean into the suffering of our Saviour, into his pain, and his sacrifice.  I pray that we will mourn well this day and allow ourselves to truly grasp the reality of human depravity that causes us to have a deep need for Christ’s ultimate sacrifice on our behalf.

Who has believed our message
and to whom has the arm of the LORD been revealed?
He grew up before him like a tender shoot,
and like a root out of dry ground.
He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him,
nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
He was despised and rejected by mankind,
a man of suffering, and familiar with pain.
Like one from whom people hide their faces
he was despised, and we held him in low esteem.

Surely he took up our pain
and bore our suffering,
yet we considered him punished by God,
stricken by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
and by his wounds we are healed.
We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
each of us has turned to our own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
the iniquity of us all.

He was oppressed and afflicted,
yet he did not open his mouth;
he was led like a lamb to the slaughter,
and as a sheep before its shearers is silent,
so he did not open his mouth.
By oppression and judgment he was taken away.
Yet who of his generation protested?
For he was cut off from the land of the living;
for the transgression of my people he was punished.
He was assigned a grave with the wicked,
and with the rich in his death,
though he had done no violence,
nor was any deceit in his mouth.

Yet it was the LORD’s will to crush him and cause him to suffer,
and though the LORD makes his life an offering for sin,
he will see his offspring and prolong his days,
and the will of the LORD will prosper in his hand.
After he has suffered,
he will see the light of life and be satisfied;
by his knowledge my righteous servant will justify many,
and he will bear their iniquities.
Therefore I will give him a portion among the great,
and he will divide the spoils with the strong,
because he poured out his life unto death,
and was numbered with the transgressors.
For he bore the sin of many,
and made intercession for the transgressors.

(Isaiah 53, New International Version, ©2011)

And amidst all the darkness and mourning of this day, there is hope:

Sunday’s coming.

Amen, and Amen.